Chromium Microsoft Edge Release Candidate is available for downloading
About a year ago, Microsoft announced that it would rebuild the Edge browser in Google’s open-source Chromium project. Today at the Ignite 2019 conference in Orlando, Microsoft was finally announced to officially launch on January 15th. The candidate release is released today and is available from the Beta channel. The version number is 79.0.309.11.
In a blog post, Microsoft says: “The release candidate of the new Microsoft Edge for Windows and macOS can be downloaded right now with general availability targeting Jan. 15 in more than 90 languages. Microsoft Edge runs on the same Chromium web engine as Google’s Chrome browser, offering you best in class web compatibility and performance“.
Microsoft highlights new features of the browser:
“A new tracking prevention default in Microsoft Edge. We believe you should know who has access to your data and have the control to choose what you share. Microsoft Edge starts with tracking prevention on by default, so you don’t have to take any actions to immediately start having a more private browsing experience. With SmartScreen and Tracking prevention, we help protect you from phishing schemes, malicious software and new types of malware like cryptojacking. Microsoft Edge and Bing also now offer new InPrivate mode across your entire web experience so your online searches and browsing are not attributed to you, offering you more control over your personal data.
New features such as Collections can be enabled as part of the Microsoft Edge preview builds, that let you more easily collect web content, organize your research and export that content into Word and Excel so that you can use the power of those applications to analyze information and collaborate.”
Dev and Canary use the updated Chromium 80 kernel. Given the higher frequency of updates, you can expect Chromium Microsoft Edge Beta to upgrade to Chromium 80 before the Chromium Microsoft Edge 79 is officially released.
